A wireless local area network (WLAN) may be formed by one or more access points (APs) that provide a wireless communication channel or link with a number of client devices or stations (STAs). Each AP, which may correspond to a Basic Service Set (BSS), periodically broadcasts beacon frames to enable any STAs within wireless range of the AP to establish and/or maintain a communication link with the WLAN. Once a connection is established, the STA and the AP may exchange data (e.g., using one or more protocols defined by the IEEE 802.11 standards).
An AP may serve multiple STAs in a wireless network. However, communications with STAs at the edge of the network (e.g., furthest from the AP) may be inefficient due to poor link quality and/or interference in the medium. For example, medium usage (MU) efficiency may be characterized by the highest achievable modulation and coding scheme (MCS) with a packet error rate (PER) of less than 10%. More specifically, the MU efficiency for a STA at the edge of the network (e.g., the “edge STA”) may be substantially lower than the MU efficiency for a STA closer to the AP. Such medium inefficiency may lead to lower throughput at the edge STA. In other words, for a given medium usage (e.g., percentage of time the AP spends transmitting data), the throughput for the edge STA will be less than the throughput for a STA closer to the AP.